EARTHQUAKE RISK EVALUATION CENTRE IN THE OFFING
The Government has decided to set up soon an
Earthquake Risk Evaluation Centre. The principal mandate of the
Centre is to collate and integrate various data sets and prepare
site-specific earthquake risk maps. The Centre is being located
as a separate wing of India Meteorological Department, New Delhi.
Required funds have been allocated to the centre to initiate the
envisaged activities under the 10th Five Year Plan.
Meanwhile, the Department of Science and Technology
has also initiated a number of major programmes on earthquake
studies using space technologies such as Global Positioning Systems
and ground based technological tools like digital seismometry
and bore-hole studies to map the geological features. Microzonation
studies of a few representative cities like Delhi, Jabalpur and
Sikkim are also under way.
No scientific technique is now available any
where in the world to predict the occurrence of earthquakes. However,
efforts are on globally, to establish the correlation between
earthquake precursors and its occurrence
